[H-GEN] HP officejet 6310 and suse10.1
Anthony Irwin
anthony at server101.com
Tue Sep 19 19:49:23 EDT 2006
andrew laidlaw wrote:
> Your comments are, of course, totally appropriate for the 5% of the
> world (including, I suppose, the likes of me) that intrinsically wants
> to take a real interest in computing as an end in itself (although
> I've always resisted the temptation of such an abstraction). I
> remain concerned about what to do for the other 95%.
I guess I like to assume that people on the humbug lists or that are
interested in linux/freebsd or whatever are wanting to learn more then
just point and click. I think you will find that 90% of people at humbug
would not know what most of the gui configuration tools are and tend to
manually configure things and not use the user friendly alternatives.
Although I haven't been to a meeting in quite a while so it may have
changed.
But it probably isn't a bad thing to expose people to it all and see if
they take it up. The whole free software movement relies on people
contributing code, help and manuals, graphics etc. So exposing people to
the technical side to see if they want to learn more isn't all bad
providing they know they don't have too and you don't have to get a
spare machine and start compiling your system from the ground up as its
just a suggestion for learning more and I still think it is a worth
while exercise for people to do.
> These you rightly divided into two groups - those who can't, or won't,
> do even windows for themselves and the (shall we say) advanced
> non-technical users, those who might arguably form the next logical
> linux target market.
But if people don't do windows for themselves I don't believe they will
get far with an alternative operating system no matter how easy it gets.
If they have barely learned windows then why would they want something
different, you have to be willing to learn something new and have an
open mind and if they are not interested in what they have got then it
will be harder for them because they will complain every time something
is different to how they think it should be (I have seen this many times
even with people who like linux they don't like say openoffice or the
gimp because they expect it to work like word or photoshop).
They can't just walk into a computer store and say I want an accounting
program and have myob or quickbooks thrown at them. Sure there are
plenty of accounting programs that you can use in linux linux gnucash,
kmymoney and a whole bunch more but if they are not interested in
finding out what they are and installing them then they are not going to
get far.
I think that people who never install new programs or add new hardware
and the like could use linux quite happily for browsing the web,
checking their email and typing the odd letter etc. Both gnome and kde
are very easy to use desktops and if it is preinstalled like windows is
for most people then they would use it happily (probably need someone to
set up audio and video codecs for a full solution).
> Please correct me if I'm wrong, but what I'm hearing in these comments
> is the implicit assumption that members of the linux community should
> either need or want to be interested in computing as an end in
> itself. I think this grossly underestimates the maturity and
> potential of linux offerings: whilst there will always be a few petrol
> heads, the market for cars is, and should be, made up of people who
> are focussed on getting from A to B (and that in comfort).
From my personal point of view I would like it if people learned the
basics of what they are doing and that goes the same for windows users.
If people want to do other things in life they generally expect to learn
a bit about it, you don't try to drive a car or even play a game of
chess or cards without learning how the games work. Yet if they sit
behind a computer then a lot of people seem to think they don't need to
learn anything and can remain clueless when it comes to computers.
If people don't want to compile kernels and manually edit configuration
files then they don't have to. I believe that it has gotten to the point
where that can be done for a lot of common things but I have never tried
myself.
However it is a hard balance because for the free software community to
survive we need to get people interested in the technical side not
everyone but exposing people to it can show them that it is not as hard
as they may have thought it to be.
Also I have put linux on a number of peoples computers and they always
have no problem using it but generally go back to windows because they
don't have an interested or care. If they don't care about software
freedom and the ideals behind it then they will generally go back to
windows because just about every software site out their is windows
based and if they don't care about the freedom and flexibility, power
etc then they won't want to find the free software alternative that
works on their system and will just go back to what the masses use.
I guess I sell the technical aspects of it because thats what I like
most about it. I have the power and freedom to do what ever I want and
the only limitations is my own knowledge and willingness to learn and
maybe others do to if that is what your hearing from a lot of people.
Kind Regards,
Anthony Irwin
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